As much as I believe they're doing a service for many of us, they shouldn't have that kind of authority. Internet censorship is pretty serious business, no matter what site is blocked. Plus, this is fucking 4chan. AT&T's gonna have to dedicate a lot of resources if they want to keep them out for good.

Hold your ground! Hold your ground! Sons of 4chan, of xkcd, my brothers, I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the connections of trolls fail, when we forsake our lulz and break all bonds of anonymity, but it is not this day. An hour of censors and blacklists, when the age of lulz comes crashing down, but it is not this day! This day we fight!! By all that you hold dear on this good Internet, I bid you stand, Men of the West basement dwelling nerds!

First they came for the pedophiles, and I said nothing, for I was not a pedophile.

Awesome. :¡This cheese is burning me!:

I burned my cheese heavily on that one. Or the cheese burned me...

Anyways this is a bad idea, not just because it's censorship, but because they're messing with 4chan, imo the most powerful site on the internet, simply because it's dominated with people who are willing to take action in the most childish ways.

Felstaff wrote:I actually see what religion is to social, economical and perhaps political progress in a similar way to what war is to technological progress.

Gunfingers wrote:Voting is the power to speak your mind. You, apparently, had nothing to say.

There are plans to hack the BBC website and post on the front page that the CEO of AT&T was shot dead in a robbery.Plans to spread rumours of CEO's deathPlans to spread rumours about the iPhone being non exclusive sooner than expected with better plans available on Comcast.

If it all goes well, they could end up in financial ruin, in the depression. Ouch.

Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right. - Salvor Hardin, From Isaac Asimov's "Foundation".

I've heard that this is because of the frequent DDoS attacks on 4chan as of late. Still, 4chan is not a site free of attacks. Surely they would have done something else sooner. And the length of time before they responded to this is kind of fishy. *adjusts tinfoil hat*At least I hope this is all it is. If they're really trying to censor the web, as I saw on ireport:

Undoubtedly, it is only the first shot fired in the war for net neutrality.

Could be interesting.

Look at me still talking when there's SCIENCE to do!

Silvyr wrote:I fucking love cocaine. I wish I could buy it somewhere...

Why does the company think it's their responsibility to block the site, though? At most, they could offer a package of blocked sites for customers to get if they want, but a universal block by a company? Seriously?

glasnt wrote:"As she raised her rifle against the creature, her hair fluttered beneath the red florescent lighting of the locked down building.

In addition, someone managed to contact high-up AT&T customer service (maybe executive-level?) and they did confirm that they blocked "portions of the site 4chan.org" for undisclosed reasons. They also said that they contacted the owners of 4chan; moot has said that he has yet to have a reply.

The posts on the bottom of that reddit page now claim the block was due to DDoS attacks on 4chan being routed through them and affecting network performance. Which would be a reasonable cause to block 4chan temporarily I guess.

"The biggest mistake 4chan could make right now is in attempting to undermine our corporation. Any hostilities, be they intentional or incidental, will be met with a proportional response." - Randall Stephenson, chairman of AT&T, early morning over 9000/27

hahahahaha

General_Norris: Taking pride in your nation is taking pride in the division of humanity.Pirate.Bondage: Let's get married. Right now.

videogamesizzle wrote:I've heard that this is because of the frequent DDoS attacks on 4chan as of late. Still, 4chan is not a site free of attacks. Surely they would have done something else sooner. And the length of time before they responded to this is kind of fishy. *adjusts tinfoil hat*At least I hope this is all it is. If they're really trying to censor the web, as I saw on ireport:

Undoubtedly, it is only the first shot fired in the war for net neutrality.

Could be interesting.

It just seems strange that they'd decide to pull the plug on the site now, 4chan seems to get attacked every other week but they've never gotten dumped on the ISP level before. It's also highly suspicious that they only decided to block img.4chan.org if it was really a DDoS attack, because when they get attacked every other time, it seems like the whole site gets hit, not just the server hosting /b/.

On the broader issue of internet censorship, I wish that people would understand that it's not just the government that censors, and that in countries where there is censorship, a lot of it ends up being self-censorship. I got into it with somebody on Twitter who was arguing that in the free market, ISPs have the right to censor whatever they want. Technically, they do have that right, however, how hard is it for people to comprehend that the government doesn't need to step in and censor directly when private enterprise is willing to do it for them? I've lived where ISPs did just that, some ISPs decided to block certain domains where there was the potential of content that the government might not like, others didn't block, but you'd never know for certain that the website that you'd been using for years might not wind up on the ISP's block list one day. I suppose that's why I'm making such a big deal about a site that I don't even visit--I don't want to see the US head down the path where ISPs decide willy nilly to block sites because they might contain content that might be illegal or objectionable.